Dolan wet her lips, and shook her head. Like she was wondering how I could possibly know these things.

I spread my hands. "The finest in professional detection, Dolan. I see all, I hear all."

She gazed out the window, then nodded.

"You want to get along, we can get along."

Grudging. Not confirming anything I'd said. Not even putting it on Krantz. She was some tough cookie, all right.

Dolan started the car, and ten minutes later we pulled down into the long curving drive that led to the rear parking lot of the L.A. County medical examiner's office behind County-USC Medical Center.

Dolan said, "You been here before?"

"Twice."

"I've been here two hundred times. Don't try to be tough. If you think you're going to bar's, walk out and get some air."

"Sure."

The rear entrance opened to a yellow tile hall where the smell hit us like a sharp spike. It wasn't terrible, like bad chicken, but you knew you were smelling something here that you wouldn't smell any other place. A combination of disinfectant and meat. You knew, on some primitive level deep in the cells, that this meat was close to your own, and that you were smelling your own death.

Dolan badged an older man behind a counter, who gave us two little paper masks. Dolan said, "We've gotta wear these. Hepatitis."

Great.

After we put on the masks, Dolan led me along the hall through a set of double doors into a long tile cavern with eight steel tables. Each table was surrounded by lights and work trays and instruments, not unlike those you see in a dentist's office. Green-clad medical examiners were working on bodies at each table. Knowing that they were working on human beings made me try to pretend that they weren't. Denial is important.

Krantz and Williams were clustered at the last table with the Buzz Cut and his two buddies. The five of them were talking with an older, overweight woman wearing lab greenies, surgical gloves, and a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. She would be the medical examiner.

Karen Garcia was on the table, and even from across the big room I could see that the autopsy was complete. The medical examiner said something to two lab techs, one of whom was washing off Karen Garcia's body with a small hose. Blood and body fluids streamed along a trough in the table and swirled down a pipe. Her body had been opened, and a blue cloth fixed to cover the top of her head. The autopsy had happened without me.

The Buzz Cut saw us first, and tipped his head. Krantz turned as we approached. "Where the hell were you, Cole? The cut was at nine. Everybody knew that."

"You were supposed to call me. You knew her father wanted me here."

"I left word for you to be notified. No one called you?"

I knew he was lying. I wasn't sure why, or why he didn't want me at the autopsy, but I was as sure of it as I've ever been sure of anything. "What am I supposed to tell her family?"

"Tell'm we fucked up. Is that what you want to hear? I'll explain it to her father myself, if that's what you want." He waved at the body. "Let's get out of here. This stink is ruining my clothes."

We went back into the tile hall, where we pulled off the masks. Williams gathered the masks from everybody and tossed them in a special can.

I stepped up to the Buzz Cut. "We haven't met. I'm Elvis Cole, employed by the family. Who are you?"

The Buzz Cut smiled at Krantz. "We'll wait hi the car, Harvey."

The Buzz Cut and his two friends walked away.

I turned back to Krantz. "What's going on with you, Krantz? Who are those guys? Why didn't you want me here?"

"Our lines got crossed, Cole. That's all there is to it. Look, you wanna go back in there and inspect the body, help yourself. You wanna talk to the ME, talk to her. The girl died of a.22 just like we thought. We recovered the bullet, but it's probably too deformed to give a rifle pattern. I don't know yet."

Williams shook his head. "No way. There won't be a pattern. Trust me."

Krantz shrugged. "Okay, the expert says no way. What else you want to know? There was no sign of a struggle or of any kind of sexual assault. We lasered the body for prints and fibers, but it was a wash. Look, Cole, I know you were supposed to be here, but you weren't, and what were we supposed to do? We lose our turn, it might be another three, four days before we can work into the schedule again. You wanna go see the bodies they got stacked in the cooler?"

"I want the autopsy report."

"Sure. You want the report, fine. Might be tomorrow or the next day."

"I want the crime scene report, too."

"I already said you could have that, didn't I? We'll print out a copy for you when we get the autopsy report. That way you'll have everything. I'm really sorry about this, Cole. If it's a problem for the old man, I'll tell him I'm sorry, too."

"Everybody's sorry, that it?"

Krantz grew red in the face. "I don't need lip from some freelance like you. All you are is a peeper. If you'd been a cop, you'd know we're busting our asses. Bruly and Salerno are knocking on every door up at the lake. No one saw anything. We've interviewed two dozen people so far, and no one knows anything. Everybody loved this girl, and no one had a motive to kill her. We're not just sitting around."

"Did you ask Dersh about the SUV?"

"C'mon, Cole. Get off of that."

"What about the homeless guy? Anyone question him?"

"Fuck you. I don't need you telling me how to do my job."

Krantz and Williams walked away.

"This is bullshit, Dolan, and you know it."

Dolan's lips parted as if to say something, then closed. She didn't seem angry now. She looked embarrassed, and I thought if they were keeping secrets, she was part of it.

We drove back to Parker Center at the same furious pace, but this time I didn't bother asking her to slow down. When she let me off in the parking garage, I walked up to my car, where it had spent the noon hour parked in the sun. It was hot, but at least nobody had slashed the interior. Even parked at the police station, that can happen, and does.

I pulled out of the lot and drove exactly one block, then pulled to the curb in front of a taco shop, and used the pay phone there to call a friend of mine at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Five minutes later I had Eugene Dersh's home and work addresses, and his phone number. The addresses were the same.

I called him, and said, "Mr. Dersh, my name is Elvis Cole, calling from Parker Center. Be all right if I dropped by and asked you a couple of follow-up questions about Lake Hollywood? It won't take long."

"Oh, sure. Are you working with Stan Watts?" Watts had been the one who interviewed him.

"Stan's down here at Parker Center, too. I was just talking with him."

"You know how to get here?"

"I can find it."

"Okay. See you soon."

If Krantz wouldn't ask him about the SUV, I would.

Dersh lived in a small California bungalow in an old part of Los Feliz just south of Griffith Park. Most of the homes were Spanish stucco with faded tile roofs, and most of the people in the neighborhood appeared to be older, but as they died off, younger people like Dersh would buy their homes and renovate them. Dersh's house was neatly painted in bright Santa Fe earth colors, and, from the looks of the place, he had put a lot of work into it.

I left my car at the curb, went up the walk, and pressed the buzzer. Some of the yards still showed ash from the fire, but Dersh's was clean. He must've come out and swept. A welcome mat at the front door read Welcome Aboard.

A short, stocky guy in his late thirties opened the door and smiled out at me. "Are you Detective Cole?"

"I'm the detective."

He put out his hand. "Gene Dersh."

Dersh led me into an attractive room with bleached oak floors and brightly colored modern paintings over white walls. "I'm having coffee. Would you like a cup? It's Kenyan."